Hello, can you please post the result of the following terminal command, and enclose it in code tags? That's the button marked </>.
This is needed for pretty much any question about your system, so it's a good habit to post it straight away.

It's not the hardware. Something is definitely up with POL as I had it working on this hardware with MINT 19. I reinstalled the OS to see if I could correct some errors. But ever since then, no matter how many times I reinstall the OS, POL still does not work. And never before this have I gotten errors before even selecting the file to use and install.

OH! It keeps telling me that WINE seems to have crashed. Maybe the wine servers are corrupted?

How do you uninstall POL and WINE and the gecko and other things that install when you install wine in POL and when you install a game in POL? How do you completely uninstall the whole POL mess, and actually uninstall it so that when you reinstall it it isn't reverting back to the same old instillation?

POL is working fine here so it's something in your install.
I suspect it's something to do with the fact that the system install of wine no longer includes 32 bit abilities. you have to also install wine32 separately from wine.
Try this in POL go to tool tab select manage wine version and install a different wine version up to 3.x something then try to install a program using the newer wine version. good luck.

Doing the purge, even with the auto remove thing done, did nothing. (I will note that it would be nice to have an option that actually removes the entire installed program and all tangent programs... because even the purge and autoremove thing didn't remove wine... I tried removing wine and reinstalling and that did nothing. It didn't reinstall the mono and gecko and whatnot stuff) Everything still malfunctions the same way. I have even tried reinstalling the OS and using different sources. There is something wrong with the latest POL and WINE downloads. It used to work. But something has clearly corrupted the download server.

And what is most odd, is that the WINE errors start before I even get to choose the file.

I'd guess that everyone agrees that it's not a hardware problem since nobody else mentioned hardware.

Doing the purge, even with the auto remove thing done, did nothing.

It didn't remove any software? That's odd.

Everything still malfunctions the same way.

What way is that?

I have even tried reinstalling the OS and using different sources. There is something wrong with the latest POL and WINE downloads. It used to work. But something has clearly corrupted the download server.

And yet the programs work for other people.

And what is most odd, is that the WINE errors start before I even get to choose the file.

What errors are those? What, for example, is "the file"? What is in "the file" that you're attempting to choose? How are you choosing "the file"? Do the wine errors start when you think about choosing "the file"? If so, turn off the telepathy option.

Please edit your original post title to include [SOLVED] if/when it is solved!Your data and OS are backed up....right?Mint 18.3 Xfce/fluxbox/pulse-lessXubuntu 17.10/fluxbox/pulse-less

I'd guess that everyone agrees that it's not a hardware problem since nobody else mentioned hardware.

Doing the purge, even with the auto remove thing done, did nothing.

It didn't remove any software? That's odd.

Everything still malfunctions the same way.

What way is that?

I have even tried reinstalling the OS and using different sources. There is something wrong with the latest POL and WINE downloads. It used to work. But something has clearly corrupted the download server.

And yet the programs work for other people.

And what is most odd, is that the WINE errors start before I even get to choose the file.

What errors are those? What, for example, is "the file"? What is in "the file" that you're attempting to choose? How are you choosing "the file"? Do the wine errors start when you think about choosing "the file"? If so, turn off the telepathy option.

1)ok

2) it removed some of the POL instillation, but not all of it. None of the errors changed.

3) I start getting "Error in POL_Wine
Wine seems to have crashed
If your program is running, just ignore this message" right after I select the version of wine. And I downloaded the latest versions of wine. 64 or 32 doesn't matter. I have to hit "next" on the error window twice, apparently there are two error windows, before it moves to the next window where I select the file to run. I get another "Error in POL_Wine
Wine seems to have crashed
If your program is running, just ignore this message" after selecting the program file and hitting the next button. Then I get a screen that says "Press next only when the instillation process has finished"... which is impossible since the instillation process never starts. The screen that should pop up when installing a game never shows.

And then, when I hit next again, I get a fatal error "Error in POL_SetupWindow_shortcut_creator
Prefix : /home/a/.PlayOnLinux//wineprefix/LongestJourner does not exist"

even though it clearly does exist...

I have never had this issue with POL before. I have had issues, but none this bad. And it happens even after reinstalling the entire OS.

4) And yet they used to work for me yet all the sudden stopped. "other people" probably aren't using the latest downloads of POL and WINE.

5) Um, seriously. Have you ever used POL? The errors start after choosing the version of wine, and I am choosing the latest versions of wine that were just downloaded. After you choose the version of wine, it ask you what exe file you want to use, and so you select it, then more errors occur just as described in #3.

How am I the only one that knows this? Somewhere during LM18.x I noticed that a large number of POL scripts became outdated. The crashing is the result of POL expecting certain libraries that simply are not available any more combined with it's wine versions behaving differently now compared to how they did when the scripts were written.